Transitions

Choose how each cue arrives on screen: a cut, a dissolve, a wipe, or a shape you set up yourself.

The transition chip

Each cuelist row starts with a chip showing the transition that plays into that cue, as its type and duration, such as Dissolve · 0.6s. The chip's look tells you where the setting comes from:

Chip appearance	Meaning
Dimmed and italic	The cue uses the cuelist's default transition. Its tooltip ends with (cuelist default).
Solid	The cue has its own transition, which overrides the cuelist default. Its tooltip ends with (override).

New cues use the cuelist default, a 0.5-second Dissolve, until you give them their own. You can't change the cuelist default; give cues their own transitions instead.

Assign a preset

1. Click the chip on the row you want to change.
2. Hover or click Presets to open the list.
3. Click a preset. It's applied to that cue immediately, and the menu closes.

To return a cue to the cuelist default, click its chip and choose Reset to cuelist default. This option appears only when the cue has its own transition.

Built-in presets

Moonshine has eleven built-in presets. You can't rename or delete them.

Preset	What it looks like	Duration
Cut	Instant change, with no blend.	0 s
Smooth Dissolve	Even crossfade between the two clips.	0.6 s
Quick Dissolve	The same crossfade, short and linear.	0.25 s
Wipe Left	A soft straight edge moves across the frame at 0°.	0.5 s
Wipe Up	The same straight edge at 90°.	0.5 s
Soft Iris	A circle opens from the middle of the frame, with a soft edge.	0.7 s
Diamond Iris	The same opening as a diamond, with a slightly harder edge.	0.7 s
Vertical Blinds	Ten vertical bands open together.	0.5 s
Grid Circles	A grid of circles (8 rows by 14 columns) grows open, staggered diagonally.	0.7 s
Clock Sweep	A hand sweeps around the center of the frame.	0.6 s
Pixel Dissolve	The frame changes over in random square blocks.	0.4 s

Build a custom transition

Click a chip and choose Customize.... The Customize Transition panel opens with a live preview that plays the transition between two colored test patterns and back, pausing half a second on each. A scrub bar underneath shows its progress. The preview uses the transition's Duration and Easing and your project's canvas shape (Settings → Project → Video), so you see it as your outputs will show it.

The three controls along the top apply to every type:

Control	Range	Notes
Type	See the table below	Changing the type resets the duration, easing and parameters to that type's defaults.
Duration	From 0 seconds to what the cue allows	0 makes the change instant, whatever the type. There's no fixed maximum: a transition can run up to a frame less than the cue it leads into (minus that cue's fade out) and a frame less than the cue before it, so the two always meet at a cut. Typing more sets the maximum. A preset longer than the cue is shortened to fit.
Easing	linear, easeInQuad, easeOutQuad, easeInOutQuad, easeInCubic, easeOutCubic, easeInOutCubic, easeInQuart, easeOutQuart, easeInOutQuart	Shapes how the change speeds up and slows down. linear is a constant speed; easeIn starts gently, easeOut ends gently, and easeInOut does both. Quad, Cubic and Quart are progressively stronger.

The Parameters column below changes with the type. Types with nothing to set show No parameters.

Click Apply to set the transition on that cue, or Cancel (or press Esc) to close without changes.

Transition types and their parameters

Type	What it looks like	Parameters
Cut	Instant change.	—
Dissolve	Straight crossfade.	—
Linear Wipe	A straight edge sweeps across the frame.	Angle, Feather, Reverse
Radial Wipe	A circular edge spreads out from a point.	Center, Feather, Reverse
Iris	A shape opens from a point.	Center, Feather, Shape, Star points
Blinds	Parallel bands open at the same time.	Count, Orientation, Feather
Grid Circles	A grid of circles grows to fill the frame.	Rows, Columns, Feather, Stagger
Grid Squares	The same, with squares.	Rows, Columns, Feather, Stagger
Clock	A hand sweeps around a point.	Center, Start angle, Reverse
Random	The frame changes over in randomly ordered square blocks.	Seed, Granularity
Movie Matte	A video sets the shape of the change: bright areas of the matte clip change first, dark areas last. Use a clip that animates from black to white. The matte plays at its own speed and the change completes when Duration ends, so set Duration to the matte clip's length. The panel's preview uses a sample matte, not your clip.	Matte movie

What each parameter does

Parameter	Range	Effect
Angle	0 – 360°	Direction of a linear wipe's edge.
Feather	0 – 0.5	Softness of the moving edge. 0 is a hard line; higher values blur the boundary.
Reverse	On / off	Runs the shape the other way: outward instead of inward, or the opposite sweep direction.
Center	X and Y, 0 – 1	Where the shape starts, as a fraction of the frame. 0.5, 0.5 is the middle.
Shape	Circle, Diamond, Star	Outline used by the Iris type.
Star points	3 – 12	Number of points when Shape is Star.
Count	2 – 64	Number of bands in a Blinds transition.
Orientation	Horizontal, Vertical	Which way the bands run.
Rows / Columns	1 – 32 each	Size of the grid.
Stagger	None, Diagonal, Random	Whether all cells change together, sweep diagonally, or change in random order.
Start angle	0 – 360°	Where a Clock sweep begins.
Seed	0 – 9999	Changes which blocks a Random transition picks first.
Granularity	1 – 512	Number of blocks across the frame's width. Blocks are always square, so a wide canvas has fewer rows than columns, and if the height isn't a whole number of blocks the top row is cut short. Low values give chunky blocks; high values approach a pixel dissolve.
Matte movie	Any video in the project	The video whose image drives the change.

Duration beats parameters

An effect that reads well at 2 seconds can disappear at 0.2. Set the duration first, then judge the feather and stagger against it in the preview.

Save your own preset

In the Customize Transition panel, click Save as preset..., enter a name and click Save.

Saving stores the preset but doesn't apply it to the cue you started from. Click Apply as well to use it on this cue now.

Your saved presets appear in the Presets submenu, below a divider under the built-in ones. Hover a saved preset to show two buttons:

• the pencil, to Rename it,
• the trash, to Delete it. It's deleted immediately, without confirmation.

Presets are saved with the project and shared with everyone working on it.

Where transitions apply

A transition plays whenever the cuelist moves from one cue to the next: when a cue's length runs out, on Next or Previous, when you double-click a row, or when you choose Trigger on a timeline clip.

Starting a cuelist that isn't already loaded, by pressing play or wiring it to a surface, cuts straight to its first cue, or plays its fade in if it has one. A seek on the timeline's ruler cuts straight to the point you chose. See Transport controls.

On the timeline

The timeline draws each transition on the clip it leads into, as wide as it lasts, with the curve of its easing inside.

On a clip	What it is
A region at its left edge, with two curves crossing	The transition into this clip from the one before. It starts at the cut and runs into the clip while the clip before plays on underneath. The solid curve is this clip coming up and the dashed curve is the clip before going down. Their shape is the transition's easing, exactly as your outputs play it
The first clip's left edge, darkened over a rising curve	Its fade in from black. The darkened part shows how much of the picture is still black
The last clip's right edge, darkened over a falling curve	Its fade out to black
A small square at the top of a region's inner end	The region's handle

Hover a region to see the transition's name, length and easing, and whether the clip has its own transition or uses the cuelist default.

To change a transition's length, drag its handle: into the clip to lengthen it, or back toward the edge to shorten it. The length shows beside the handle as you drag, and snaps to whole frames at your project's timecode rate. A transition has the same limits as in the Customize Transition panel. A fade can run the whole clip, minus the transition at its other end.

Dragging the transition of a clip that uses the cuelist default gives that clip its own transition, at the new length. Dragging a Cut open turns it into a Dissolve. Undo reverses a drag in one step. The handles are hidden while someone else is editing playback.

To change a transition's type, easing or parameters, right-click the clip and choose Transition….

Fade in and fade out

A cuelist that doesn't loop can fade its first cue in from black and its last cue out to black. On the timeline, hover the first clip to show a handle in its top-left corner, or the last clip for a handle in its top-right corner, and drag the handle into the clip. Drag a fade back to the edge to remove it.

A new fade eases in and out (easeInOutCubic), as a new Dissolve does. To change it, right-click the clip, choose Fade in easing or Fade out easing, and pick one of the ten easings. The curve on the clip updates, and Undo reverses the change. The sound fades with the picture.

When	What your outputs show
You press play on a stopped cuelist	Its first cue fades up from black
You press Stop	Black, if the first cue fades in: the cuelist is back at the top, ready to fade up again
The last cue ends	It fades to black, and the outputs stay black until you play again
You trigger the first cue from another cue	A crossfade into it, using its transition, rather than a fade from black
You seek into a fade	The picture at that point in the fade

With Loop on, a cuelist has no start or end: its last cue runs into its first, or each cue into itself. So it plays no fades, and the timeline draws none. The first clip shows the transition into it from the last clip instead.

On a lane

A clip on a lane above the base fades the same way wherever it has nothing beside it in its lane: before or after a gap, at the lane's end, and at its start in a cuelist that doesn't loop. It fades to transparent rather than black, so the lanes below show through. Its handles are in the same corners, and its easing uses the same menu. Without a fade, a lane clip cuts in and out at those points, because a transition plays only between two clips side by side.